Word: casino
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Business in Asia is played very much like ice hockey. The big guys - state-backed behemoths, massive conglomerates and supertycoons - almost always pin smaller enterprises against the glass to score the plum deal. So it seemed for Lawrence Ho, CEO of NASDAQ-listed casino operator Melco Crown Entertainment. Less than a year ago, the giants of the gaming industry - Vegas legends Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands - had shoved the little-known Ho to the edge of Asia's casino market. But his rivals should have taken note of how Ho, a recreational hockey player, likes...
...same to the Vegas big shots. Melco Crown is one of only six companies permitted to run casinos in Macau, the Chinese enclave that has surpassed Las Vegas in total gambling revenue. And Ho, 31, has matched his competitors chip for chip. His first casino-hotel, the Crown Macau, saw few customers when it opened in May 2007. But Melco Crown swiftly closed the gap. Its market share of 16% in the first half of 2008 was just a whisker behind Wynn with 17% and Las Vegas Sands at 21%, according to Citi Investment Research. More impressively, the Crown...
...says he did it by capitalizing on his home-field advantage and ample gaming experience. His pedigree is certainly formidable. Ho is the son of Stanley Ho, the 86-year-old tycoon who held a monopoly on Macau's casinos for four decades until the government issued new licenses in 2002. Lawrence and sister Pansy both started working in the family business but struck out on their own after the market opened up - in competition with their father. Pansy teamed with Vegas firm MGM Mirage to develop casino-hotels in Macau, opening the MGM Grand Macau in 2007. Stanley...
...Wynn Macau, which opened in 2006, and Adelson's gargantuan 3,000-room Venetian, a re-creation of his famed Vegas resort that opened three months after the Crown Macau. Located on one of the enclave's outer islands, the Crown was too far from the city's other casinos to attract walk-in gamblers. In the month of its opening, the Crown claimed an embarrassing 1.7% share of the gaming market. Melco Crown lost money in the first three quarters of its casino's operations...
...Rookie mistakes, perhaps. Ho admits the company "got a little too greedy" by rushing the opening and by targeting mass-market customers. Crown's managers believed all they'd have to do was set up shop to see a rush of gamblers. But with a growing number of casinos in Macau, success was no longer so automatic. "In an all-out competitive environment, it's really a game of inches," Ho says. "Management didn't adapt for the local market." Unlike in Vegas, where casinos are filled by average Joes pumping coins into slot machines, high rollers account for some...